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DNA back in Baby Moses case

Officials from the Martin County Sheriff's Office and Florida Gulf Coast University forensic anthropologists exhumed three grave sites of unknown infants in January in search of DNA evidence in the baby Moses case from 1983.(Photo: TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS)

STUART — Results of DNA testing are back in the decades-old homicide case of “Baby Moses,” but Martin County Sheriff William Snyder said Friday that hard work remains in front of investigators.

Sheriff’s investigators and forensic anthropologists in January exhumed three graves at Fernhill Memorial Gardens in Stuart to help solve a 1983 homicide.

The victim is an unidentified infant boy found in a local waterway, and investigators hoped DNA could be extracted to help identify the parents.

At the time of the slaying, the infant, eventually dubbed “Baby Moses,” was taken to the medical examiner’s office, and then to Aycock Funeral Home, said Martin County Sheriff’s Detective Michael Oliver. Investigators eventually were led to Fernhill, where index cards in a ledger indicated three unknown infants were buried in 1989.

Three graves were exhumed, yielding what is thought to be two sets of remains. In one grave, investigators found no signs of a casket.

Snyder said the lab results, which came from a facility at the University of North Texas, “do not indicate that we have more than the remains of one person.”

It's unclear whether that person is Baby Moses, he said. It could be the remains from one of the other two gravesites.

“There’s nothing easy about this case, and I know people want very clear direct answers, how many babies, how many bones, how many different DNA samples,” Snyder said. “Some of that stuff is impossible to answer and we’re not working with a pristine burial.”

Heather Walsh-Haney, a forensic anthropologist with Florida Gulf Coast University, spent two days with graduate students at Fernhill during the exhumation process.

Snyder said Walsh-Haney sent material to the University of North Texas for analysis. Attempts to reach her via phone and email for questions since July have not been successful.

“I have been in this industry for 43 years and I have learned to temper my hope with reality, and I know that in a 30-year-old case with easily disintegrating remains and no witnesses that we had a narrow window of hope,” Snyder said.

Snyder declined to say whether tips have come in or whether the agency has suspects. He also could not say whether they have identified any potential family members.

“The hard work still lies before us, and that is finding a match for what we have,” he said. “That will be a complex task.”

Martin County Sheriff's Office investigators and Florida Gulf Coast University forensic anthropologists (center) uncover a gravesite at Fernhill Memorial Garden and Mausoleum on Kanner Highway in Stuart in January, while looking for clues in search of Baby Moses. Three grave plots marked as unknown infant at the cemetery were being exhumed for DNA evidence to help with identifying the body of an infant, now known as baby Moses, found drowned in an canal in November of 1983. (Photo: TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS)